2025 year in review: patient stories that changed our perspective
3 minute read
after the long bike rides in 2024, li jiang has found that everything has improved. her symptoms are reduced, she’s stronger and happier. even her neurologist is impressed.
supplied
stay up to date on this topic
at healthing, we strive to foster connection among patients who share similar lived experiences, while also highlighting that each person—regardless of whether they live with the same disease—has a uniquely different experience full of highs, lows and all the moments in between.
our goal with patient stories is to provide people with heartfelt inside looks into the journey, while also offering feelings of hope, resilience and togetherness. we hope that when you read these stories, you can feel the raw emotion of each patient’s experience as we do. while all the people that we speak to bring their own passionate storytelling, these five stuck out this year.
here are all our picks for stories of the year revolving around patients and their experiences.
—
living with brain cancer: ‘it’s given me more compassion for people and their own experiences’
when stuart selby, a biochemist from toronto, ont., was re-entering his office after the worst of the covid-19 pandemic was over, he began experiencing what felt like panic attacks. he had several of the hallmark signs—overwhelming feelings of impending doom, difficulty speaking, and mixing up words.
the attacks would come on fast and only last a short time. but when they began happening far too frequently, upwards of ten times a day, stuart thought it was time to see a professional. he was sent to both a psychiatrist and a neurologist, and as it turned out, panic attacks weren’t the diagnosis. it was focal aware seizures.
—
living with prostate cancer: giving back to help others navigate a cancer diagnosis
both al carl and terry day, a retired army officer and a retired military officer, respectively, had relatively no obvious or commanding symptoms of prostate cancer before they were diagnosed. their respective physicians noticed that their prostate-specific antigen (psa) numbers, a marker indicating cancer, were increasing through routine testing.
advertisement
then they both got the news. al wasn’t expecting it, so receiving his diagnosis hit him like a bag of bricks. for terry, though, whose psa levels had been slowly rising every time he got his six-month check-up, it wasn’t as much of a shock.
—
what it feels like: having a stroke at 24 helps you ‘realize how precious life is’
raben dommann is a healthy, 24-year-old team canada swimmer, specifically a backstroker. one day, as he was preparing for his regular training session in the pool, watching technique videos, he felt a weakness in his right leg and started to feel lightheaded. when he tried to get up from his seat to walk, he realized that something was going on because he couldn’t take steps in the same way, and the confusion set in.
“in the moment, i would have just neglected it and written it off and probably thought, ‘oh, my leg, something weird happened with my leg,’ and i’d move on,” he said. “but i had a lot of people telling me to follow up with it, so i went to the hospital.”
after raben went to the hospital for the event, he got news that most 24-year-olds would never expect to hear: he had an ischemic stroke
—
living with parkinson’s disease: one woman’s journey transformed by endurance cycling
li jiang’s life-changing moment happened during a cycling trip across a chunk of the u.s. from may 1 to july 1, 2024. she and two others with parkinson’s disease started the trek to raise awareness for the disease in yorktown, virginia and cycled to san diego, california—an unforgettable achievement.
“that journey saved me,” she says. it eclipsed the darkness and exhaustion she’d experienced over the years living with early-onset parkinson’s, giving her a renewed sense of the possibility of what she could do with her life.
—
living with ovarian cancer: choosing action over despair
advertisement
sometimes you get a second chance at life. for sue, a retired program coordinator for preschoolers, she’s thrilled she can spend time with her grandchildren and celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary in october. it’s a milestone for any marriage but especially momentous when you weren’t sure you’d be around to celebrate it.
“i think we’ll just have a nice get-together. i basically said i don’t want to go anywhere or have a big thing. our kids are planning it and there’s 22 of us, so we’ll get a big family picture taken,” says sue, who lives in eastern ontario.
she was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer in may 2021 at age 69. four years later, she’s feeling good and staying positive. she’s also learning how to play pickleball.
share story
